Work Text:
Satellite images showed pieces of the SM-13 scattered all over the bottom of the trench, as though it had been torn apart by some huge beast. Captain Ava Korolev was also lost in a desperate attempt to gather valuable data the SM-13 reportedly had. With such harsh losses, it was voted to halt all expeditions of the moon's oceans beyond the surface.
A week later, a distress signal from a black box was received. The Coalition tracked it down to find one wrapped in a life jacket, floating on the ocean surface.
Clinging to it with his remaining arm and covered in coagulation, was the convict of the SM-13.
His name was not on their records.
The idea that the convict's body could be recognizable after the supposed implosion on the ocean floor was remarkable, but what was impossible was his still beating heart and drawing lungs.
His body had been undoubtedly changed—dark red pustules and veins throbbed across his skin, running oxygen through his body even when his lungs were filled with liquid. They scabbed and hardened over where his arm used to be, forming a tough shell that the doctors didn't dare to try and crack. There was significant radiation in the convict's system, but with each day the convict recovered, their readings showed it decreasing at an exponential rate.
Even with the limited tools for testing, it was easy to draw a conclusion as to the convict's survival: these new bloody additions to his system let him defy all the factors that should have doomed him—the suffocation, the starvation, the radiation, and many more.
There was a surge of hope from this discovery. Searches for survivors of previous expeditions renewed in full force, especially for former Captain Korolev. The SM-15 was rapidly developed and launched, with constant patrols of the surface.
Even greater hope from the convict was the proof of the planet as a resource for the Coalition, more than they had ever hoped. Not only could it be sourced for nutrients, but it had the potential to heal and sustain beyond the technology of humanity even before the Quiet Rapture.
The hope wavered when the SM-15 was lost.
It suffered immensely when neither it nor any of the previous expeditions left survivors.
It was on its last legs when the data on the black box was retrieved, only to hear crying and screaming about human blood that should not be consumed.
Members of Eden had already leaked to the rest of humanity of the blood moon's existence, and it was all the Coalition could do to keep the convict and the rest of their discoveries a secret. When the convict finally woke up, all the hopes and expectations built upon him in the weeks of waiting were not assuaged.
Though responsive, he was difficult to communicate with. He rarely believed anything that was told to him, nor did he trust his senses of his surroundings, and only seemed to stop when Captain David Ehrlich asked about the whereabouts of former Captain Korolev. He promptly broke down into apologies and weeping, and after another hour being unresponsive, was cognizant enough to answer questions.
Though he was able to recount a basic timeline—being stranded, finding the SM-8, Captain Korolev's failed dive—his explanation behind such events were much more difficult to parse. He gave many supernatural explanations to the strange events that occurred, and some suspected these strange experiences were simply the result of alcohol or radiation.
But the Quiet Rapture didn't follow scientific logic, and neither did the new additions to the convict's body, so many had no choice but to act as if his words were true. Expeditions into the depths were once again called off, and all remaining resources were focused on investigating what it had done to the convict's anatomy.
The convict expressed displeasure at this, but largely provided no resistance to such prodding.
It was only a few days later that the recorded interview with the convict was released to every database known to humanity—including Eden. While the convict was a suspect, the true culprit was a member of the Coalition, who decided that everyone deserved to know. He was subsequently imprisoned, but the damage had already been done.
Long ago, one of our brothers was taken by the Coalition of Iron. He was tortured, welded into a metal box and abandoned at the bottom of an ocean of blood. They hoped he would die there.
He was gone for seven days. On the eighth, he returned with new knowledge for our people.
He was the Ocean's Chosen.
He had become one with the blood, an example for the next stage of human evolution. He gifted us with the truth: that our vanished brothers and sisters of the Quiet Rapture were waiting for us, at the bottom of the ocean. Eden had not considered a life beyond waiting for us, but the Ocean's Chosen proved them wrong, that eternal harmony was a simple pilgrimage away. Humanity was saved.
With this new revelation, a shaky peace was built between the Coalition of Iron and Eden. The Ocean's Chosen, to the bafflement of his brothers in Eden, chose to stay with the Coalition. The faithful understood his sacrifice—to remain with the nonbelievers and eventually sway them to the truth.
He will join the rest of us once every other soul has been shepherded to the other side. It is what the ocean chose him for.
There wasn't a knock on Simon's door, just the sound of it opening and closing. He glanced at the clock—there shouldn't be another appointment for several hours.
Simon's hand slid under his pillow for the makeshift shiv. He suspected the doctors knew he had it, but after the last break-in of his room they let him keep it. Footsteps shuffled closer to his bed from just around the corner.
Simon's senses overlapped the hopsital room with a stuffy metal coffin, and squelching footsteps slowly approaching.
David didn't flinch when he rounded the corner to see Simon pointing the shiv at him, but he didn't step any closer. His eyes were swollen and sunken at the same time, exhausted and pink.
Simon lowered the shiv. The last time he saw David was when he first woke up with the Coalition, and blubbered out an apology for what happened to Ava. He had no doubt it was the reason David didn't tell the rest of the Coalition his name.
"If you're just here to bother me again, just leave already," Simon muttered. "You already know I didn't leak those recordings."
That hadn't been a pleasant morning, with officers he barely knew the names of barging into the medical bay with shouts of was it you?!
David didn't respond to the accusation, just grabbing a nearby chair and sitting across from Simon's bed. He draped an arm over the back.
"Jack went to the ocean today," David said, not making eye contact with Simon. "I suppose he thought whatever was waiting down there couldn't be any worse than vomiting blood up here everyday."
That made Simon pull back. He tucked the shiv back under his pillow and looked away. "I'm sorry," he murmured, "again."
He didn't clarify if it was for the radiation or the pilgrimage. He knew David blamed him for both.
"Why didn't you go with?" David asked.
"With Jack?"
David scoffed. "Any of them. All of Eden was begging to take you, and if the Coalition could handle a fight with them, they wouldn't have let your weird little cult travel to our moon in the first place. We would have let you go with them. Why choose to stay with us?"
Simon shrugged, a red stump waving in the air. "You saw what it did to me. I'm never going back down there again."
"Right. The, uh…big talking fish."
Simon squeezed his eyes shut. "Look, believe the story or not, but your superiors did. If you have a problem with your orders, take it to them."
"No, I'm not—fuck," David cut himself off, wiping a hand down his face. "I just…there's this one part of your story that's bothered me."
Simon's entire body tensed up, sending another wave of aching through his chest. "What is it?"
"You said the…voice…didn't want you to leave the depths. That it didn't want anything leaving."
He already knew the question before David asked it.
"But it's also the only reason you're still alive. Why try so hard to keep you down there, only to change your body so it could survive the journey back to the surface? It doesn't make any sense."
"Are you wondering why it saved me instead of anyone else?" Simon asked back.
David's face twisted, his lips pressed together like they wanted to spit a fuck you, but he swallowed the words and looked away.
He wondered if David would want to know that the depths had apologized to Ava before taking her. But Simon's body hurt enough already—he didn't need to add a broken nose to it.
The Coalition had already asked this question from Simon, and at the time the best he could give was an I don't know. He only understood once he saw that crowd of Eden's members, looking up at him with wide eyes and clasped hands.
"It was furious that I wanted to live so badly," Simon said with a scoff—what nostalgia, he thought. "Isn't that silly? I was already dead the moment I was sealed in, it could have just waited for me to suffocate down there. But for some reason, it wanted me to want it. I think."
"So the eldritch fish monster at the bottom of the ocean is insecure."
"It wants people to find it willingly," Simon said, looking down at his remaining hand, pulsating with veins on the surface of the skin rather than underneath it. "What better reason for people to search than proof that there is a better life down there?"
David cursed under his breath—it seemed he already suspected the reason for Simon's survival, and just needed confirmation from the source. David's narrowed eyes trailed down the red branching lines across Simon's body, his knuckles pressed against his mouth in thought. "You have quite the habit of trading lives for your own."
It was so painfully reminiscent of the speaker's words, Simon couldn't hold back the groan in his sigh. "Look, Captain Ava chose to go down for me. I heard her argue with you—she had every chance to leave me behind, or at least send someone else in her stead. As for this—" he gestured at his body, "I wasn't planning to live. That was the ocean's choice."
"So none of this is your fault?"
"You're the ones who gave me no choice to leave that submarine. After all," he looked back up at David with a bitter, toothy grin. "This is bigger than all of us."
David's fingers tightened into a fist, and Simon wondered for a moment if he really was going to earn a broken nose. But then all the tension in David's body relinquished at once, his fingers unraveling into flat palms against his face. He was quiet, save for the breathing that forcefully slowed with each second.
"But then why stay?" David asked with a weak voice, then peeked between his fingers at the veins poking out from the cuffs of Simon's pants. "How much control do you have over that body?"
That, not yours. Simon rolled his ankles. "For now, all of it. And I'd rather the COI poke and prod at it than the br—than Eden to worship it."
"How are you so sure that isn't what the ocean wants?"
"It's what I want," Simon said, and looked up at David. "Are you going to stop me?"
The again went unspoken.
David met his gaze for a moment. He made one more glance at the veins, then stood up and said, "Good night, Simon."
He walked out of the medical bay.
Simon didn't see him again. His only proof that he hadn't taken a pilgrimage was brief mentions from his doctor of a David hard at work, trying to sway those of Eden and the Coalition alike to not visit the ocean.
He had convinced at least one.